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The Holy Trinity of Mecha

July 10th, 2017, 04:17 AM

If you haven't seen any of these three, you aren't doing it right :p 0V7k2c6.jpg

Mazinger Z (Go Nagai): The first one to even put pilots inside giant robots, and the inventor of the super robot genre. It probably even did the whole "shouting your attacks" anime tradition first (it was made in 1972 so it's quite likely). Without this, we wouldn't have had everything else of that type (including Megas XLR obviously).

Getter Robo (Ken Ishikawa): The first giant combining robot, made out of 3 jets with pilots in each, and can take 3 forms depending on the order of the combination. Without this, we wouldn't have had stuff like Voltron, Super Sentai/Power Rangers megazords, Ideon, Gunbuster, GaoGaiGar, Gurren Lagann (especially), and just about any other combining mecha series.

Mobile Suit Gundam (Yoshiyuki Tomino): The first series to apply real life physics to giant robots and portray them as mass-produced war machines rather than as heroes fighting for justice, in what would become the real robot division of the mecha genre. Macross, VOTOMS, Code Geass, Patlabor, and even non-anime such as Mechassault, Titanfall, and Metal Gear follow this blueprint for the most part.

If you haven't seen any of these three, you aren't doing it right :p 0V7k2c6.jpg

Mazinger Z (Go Nagai): The first one to even put pilots inside giant robots, and the inventor of the super robot genre. It probably even did the whole "shouting your attacks" anime tradition first (it was made in 1972 so it's quite likely). Without this, we wouldn't have had everything else of that type (including Megas XLR obviously).

Getter Robo (Ken Ishikawa): The first giant combining robot, made out of 3 jets with pilots in each, and can take 3 forms depending on the order of the combination. Without this, we wouldn't have had stuff like Voltron, Super Sentai/Power Rangers megazords, Ideon, Gunbuster, GaoGaiGar, Gurren Lagann (especially), and just about any other combining mecha series.

Mobile Suit Gundam (Yoshiyuki Tomino): The first series to apply real life physics to giant robots and portray them as mass-produced war machines rather than as heroes fighting for justice, in what would become the real robot division of the mecha genre. Macross, VOTOMS, Code Geass, Patlabor, and even non-anime such as Mechassault, Titanfall, and Metal Gear follow this blueprint for the most part.

Megas XLR was based off of most of this BTW
It referenced Mazinger Z a crap load of times and the last episode along with a few others were references to Mobile Suit Gundam.
Heck it even threw in a reference to Getter Robo G once :p

Gurren Lagann? The RIP-OFF series? Don't make me laugh, please. And yes, It ripped off all of these shows and more in the world of mecha. Not to mention it isn't even an OG and it doesn't have nearly as good theme songs (not openings, theme songs, and they're important to Super Robots).
To enlighten you on how would be too tasking. Mazinger Z being the first Super Robot had a lot of weight in the creation of Gurren Lagann. For example, this:

With Getter Robo... don't even get me started on this one.
Spiral energy is literally a watered-down version of Getter Rays, color, abilities, and all. Heck even the robots getting bigger and bigger is Getter Robo.
Then there's the tons of other Getter Robo references here and there that it's a lot to explain. But Kamina (and Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren) got his glasses from something in Getter Robo Armageddon, Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann literally copied Getter Robo G's pose when it came out from underwater, etc...

Luckily, the original Mobile Suit Gundam was the least referenced one out of them all. Gurren Lagann took from it the concept of naming robots anything other than robots (Mobile Suits, Gunmen, the word "robot" literally doesn't exist in the vocabulary of either verse), along with the whole "piloted robot-only" combat forces throughout the entire series, no giant monsters or anything like that. They also took the whole Grapearl thing from the real robot genre that it started, and then the thing about a gray area and stuff, no real good and evil (Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of Gundam does that a lot). And then they took stuff from non-Tomino works such as G Gundam (Lordgenome is basically Master Asia) and After War Gundam X (their literal episode naming style along with a reference in the 2nd episode).
Also, Gundam has this:

Comment

However, my previous wall of text wasn't at all to imply that Gurren Lagann was in any way bad, as it was particularly made for the purpose of being a homage to many of the mecha anime series that came before it, influential or no.
In fact, it's quite a pillar of genius how they were able to combine stuff from various mecha anime series over the years and put it in a blender to make it seem like an original part of the show (to viewers who aren't acquainted with mecha) in just 26 episodes.